Masters of the Universe category archive

Process servers are doing just fine, thank you.

The number of U.S. homes entering the foreclosure process for the first time increased in May and June, as banks aim to make up for time lost last year when mortgage lenders grappled with allegations that they had processed foreclosures without verifying documents. The nation’s biggest lenders reached a $25 billion settlement in February with state officials. That’s cleared the way for banks to address their backlog of unpaid mortgages. California saw an 18 percent spike last month in foreclosure starts, or homes placed on the foreclosure path for the first time.

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ruth Ann Dailey spins a little tale that both skewers some sanctimonious* lefties and casts light on the rightwing reaction to President Obama’s statement that (I’m paraphrasing here) every successful person had a little help along the way.

Read it all the way through (the punch line is at the end, natch).

______________________

*Sanctimony is never well-timed and seldom welcome.

The Guardian reports that the amount of money hidden in places like the Cayman Islands (aka Romney’s Reward) exceeds the combined GDP of Japan and the United States. A snippet:

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, “protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy”. According to Henry’s research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.

(snip)

“These estimates reveal a staggering failure: inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people,” said John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. “People on the street have no illusions about how unfair the situation has become.”

It’s not the Laffer Curve.

It’s the looter’s curve,

The scams won’t stop till the scammers go to jail.

A former Bank of America Corp. executive was indicted for allegedly participating in what prosecutors said was a “far-reaching conspiracy” to defraud municipal bond investments through bid rigging.

Phillip D. Murphy, former head of Bank of America’s municipal derivatives desk, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., wire fraud and conspiracy to make false entries in bank records, according to the indictment filed yesterday in federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Yesterday’s tails of fail. One would think that, eventually, there would be no more banks to blank.

Here is yesterday’s crop of responsible fiscal fatalities. Note that Georgia increased its lead in fast and loose:

Second Federal Savings and Loan Association of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Heartland Bank, Leawood, Kansas

First Cherokee State Bank, Woodstock, Georgia

Georgia Trust Bank, Buford, Georgia

Royal Palm Bank of Florida, Naples, Florida

In the San Jose Mercury-News, Victor Dorff describes what he considers a new attitude amongst his students: that cheating is just part of the game.

A nugget:

A few weeks ago, a student took my final exam in the morning and gave the answers to someone taking it that afternoon. The second student didn’t notice that the question on his test was slightly different, and the answer was now wrong. When confronted, he professed not to understand that he had cheated. He thought that getting a test answer from another student in advance was no different than studying with a partner.

He goes on to wonder how to combat the cheaters.

Mr. Dorff misses the point.

The students are demonstrating that they can learn from their betters, using proven tactics to master their universe.

They aren’t just copying the answers.

They are copying the success strategies of the rich, the influential, the revered, the kowtowed-to.

The Wall Street.

Pandora paraphrases Queen Anntoinette.

Let them eat cake.

An industry rotten to the core:

The latest example came Tuesday when U.S. lawmakers detailed a pattern of deceit and illicit activity at HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest bank. For years, the bank looked the other way as terrorists, drug cartels and other criminals used its far-flung operations as a conduit into the U.S. financial system, according to a Senate report. As Leopoldo Barroso, a top HSBC anti-money-laundering official told the bank upon his departure in 2008, the institution’s standard practice was to pursue “profit and targets at all costs” and it was “only a matter of time” before it faced criminal charges.

The roll call of alleged malfeasance at other banks is long.

Follow the link for just a eensy-weensy bit of the roll call.

Via Delaware Liberal.

When did we become a country where the millionaires are jealous of the people on food stamps?

Via A Degenerate Elite.

This little stat is buried midway through a long article in the Chicago Trib about how “Flip This House” has become “Flip This Repossession”:

According to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure listing service, 26 percent of homes sold in the first quarter of 2012 were foreclosed properties, an increase of 8 percent from 2011. Short sales of properties accounted for 12 percent of national sales in the first quarter, up from 9 percent last year.

In the Bank of Ameriquest for riches it is a Countrywide thing that few can Fargo.

The San Jose Mercury-News lists some of the bonus babies who got bonuses right along with their walking papers:

Consider the outcry over a $34.8 million retirement package for PG&E’s Peter Darbee, who left the company in April 2011 with the company’s reputation in ruins after the deadly San Bruno gas line explosion and subsequent federal safety investigation.

(snip)

Or the ruckus caused by a generous departing payout to Hewlett-Packard’s Apotheker, who left with millions of dollars after just 11 months on the job.

(snip)

In another example, AMD’s Dirk Meyer got an $8.7 million severance in January 2011 after only 3 1/2 years as chief executive. Meyer was ousted because of the company’s sluggish growth and failure to get chips into smartphones and tablets.

And then there is Yahoo(YHOO). CEO Carol Bartzleft with $3 million in severance after she was summarily fired in a phone call from the board chairman in September 2011. She also got a prorated cash bonus of $477,534 and accelerated vesting of restricted stock she could exercise for a year.

You don’t have to do a good job. This isn’t “pay for performance.”

This is the club of “wears nice suits, looks good in meetings, draws pretty charts” taking care of its own.

Being in the the club means never having to say you’re sorry.

At Philly dot com, Jeff Gelles tells the story of another foreclosure victim. A nugget:

Fiorilli’s saga — backed up by a thick file of documents and call logs — is a story of a mortgage accommodation dangled and apparently snatched away for flimsy reasons, such as a phone payment that came in 35 cents short, and another payment that came in two weeks early. That’s no misprint: early, not late.

(snip)

Ironically, borrowers like Fiorilli, committed to paying off a loan rather than walking away, are offering a gift to lenders.

If her foreclosure winds up in Philadelphia’s conciliation program, Clarifi’s Anita Brown predicts, the judge will see it that way, too. “The court is going to say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Bank of America, are you nuts? Take the money and get out of here.’?”

One does not have to editorialize. The facts do it for one.

The US justice department is building criminal cases against several financial institutions and their employees related to the manipulation of inter-bank lending rates, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

Now we’ll see whether they just try to go after the errand boys or actually have the courage to confront the Mr. Bigs.

In a shocking decision, a Georgia court rules that banks must follow the law:

The Georgia Court of Appeals held Thursday that the name of the actual owner of a mortgage must be present in foreclosure filings and notices sent to delinquent borrowers.

State law was modified in 2008 to require that foreclosure notices and legal advertisements include the name and contact information of the mortgage owner and of organizations that could negotiate a modification, short sale or other relief on lender’s behalf.

“A debtor has a right to know which entity has the authority to foreclose, and there should be no confusion about the identity of that entity. The practical ramifications are troubling if it were otherwise,” the court majority agreed in its opinion.

This may be the end of the economy as we know it.

Oh whatever shall we do?

I got caught up in making cauliflower with caper sauce last night and forgot to check the bank obits. No longer with us are

Glasgow Savings Bank, Glasgow, Missouri

Montgomery Bank & Trust, Ailey, Georgia

Georgia maintains its lead as the graveyard of bankster grifters.